Chapter 22: Strive to Survive

*Congratulations. You have gained a level. You are now level 8.

+6 HP +3 SP +1 Strength +2 Constitution +3 Unallocated stat points.

*Photosynthesis (C) lvl 11/20-> Photosynthesis (C) lvl 14/20.

*Roots of nature (R) lvl 4/20 -> Roots of nature (R) lvl 5/20.

I shake my head as I continue sunbathing close to Sairal’s tree. It’s been four days since the human army tried to capture me. Nothing much happened after that. I’ve just been waiting around for my arm to regrow.

The forest is still not back to its original state. The monsters are more abundant now, but (H) grades remain more than scarce. There are the occasional pests that crawl out of the caves but I have been hesitant to take on something in my grade.

There is, however, plenty of activity at night. Each day, when I make my way towards Sairal’s tree, the mushroom guardians are staring at the carcasses of some kind of monster that I’ve never seen. They are usually too disfigured to make out any detail of them since they are all smashed to pulp by the mushroom guardians.

Sairal on the other hand, still hasn’t returned. It should take him four or five more days to get back. I just want him to be here now. I can really use some extra help right now.

My arm still hasn’t grown back and I’m starting to get worried that it never will.

I stare at the cauterised stump that looks almost exactly the same. The roots on it feel raw and burnt and don’t show the slightest hint of growth. I thought that sunbathing would do some good, that if I levelled the skill high enough that I somehow would overcome something with the additional energy flowing in my veins. I might reach that ‘something’, break that barrier if I stand out here for weeks and level the skill to its cap.

The bad thing is that not only do I have one arm to take on monsters, my Health too continues to sit at 53, not regenerating further.

I tried using Roots of Nature to do something about it but I somehow find no purchase. It is like I’m trying to pull on something that doesn’t exist anymore.

I curse myself again for throwing away that ginseng at that human. Maybe it could have helped me regrow my arm with the life mana that it contained. Then again, would I be alive if I didn’t throw it away?

I open the menu that shows all the skills that I have unlocked and can pick from. One in particular stands out.

*Congratulations. Thanks to your feats you have unlocked the skill Fire Resistance (B).

It’s almost a sick joke of the system to offer this after my arm was cut off. I scroll through the list of skills, most of them Ordinary rarity, so not even worth picking up.

Thanks to the army I unlocked a few other skills such as Ice Resistance but that is a bit too niche to pick up. Besides, that isn’t really a weakness of a mandrake. Sure most plants don’t like the cold, but they can resist fire even less.

I pick the skill and wince as yet another skill slot disappears. Look at my entire menu and nod to myself.

Mandrake of nature lvl 8/10 (H)

HP: 53/73

SP: 39/39

Strength: 15

Agility: 10

Perception: 5

Constitution: 22

Endurance: 7

Mind: 4

Unallocated stat points: 9

Skill points: 8

Skills: 8/17 skill slots in use

Photosynthesis (C) lvl 14/20: Stand still in the light of the sun to catch its energy and make it yours. Increases Stamina and Health regeneration slightly.

Mandrake Screech (C) lvl 8/20: A mandrake’s scream is its only method of defence. Damages enemies slightly and has a chance to stun an opponent.

Identify (C) lvl 7/20: See through opponents and enemies alike. Allows the user to see basic information and gives access to the most commonly known knowledge.

Roots of Nature (R) lvl 5/20: You are nature and you are roots. Allows the user to make small changes to their root body and to manipulate the roots in their immediate vicinity.

Claw Slash (B) lvl 12/20: Infuse your claws with stamina, creating a fierce slash that wounds more than normal. Expending more stamina increased the damage delivered.

Hide (B) lvl 2/20: Blend in with the surroundings to stand out less at the expense of stamina.

Dance of Death (C) lvl 1/20: Enter a special kind of meditation, increasing your focus to a pinpoint while making things such as pain and emotional distress fade into the background at a small expense of stamina and health.

Warning: This skill can only be activated when the being is in large-scale fights.

Fire Resistance (B) lvl 1/20: Basic resistance against fire.

I feel the need to add my free stat point into Constitution but how much more will nine points do? I’ll just keep them for now and spend them when I encounter a problem or a monster that forces me to invest in one stat or another.

The rest of this day is spent absorbing more sunlight and generally levelling my skills. When the sun starts to set I come to a new conclusion. My leaves regenerated with my previous evolution. Maybe I can do the same with my arm?

I’m just two levels away from the cap. It isn’t that much, just a few fights with some weaker (H) grades should be enough for me. I can even just continue to stand in the sun and convert all the energy into experience.

I wave my goodbyes to the mushroom guardians that now actually wave back. It’s weird. Whatever Sairal did to them, they are growing more animated each day.

I walk to my home but before I do, I hear a low, distressing rumble behind me. The mushroom guardians stare at Sairal’s tree in fear. Leaves rain down from it, getting blown away by the wind.

The lower-grade mushroom guardians sprint towards the moss carpet and shrink back to their hibernation forms as more leaves rain from the tree. The branches rattle and shake in fear as if something is approaching.

I let out a painful breath, looking as the entire tree shakes, more of the leaves falling to the ground. It’s his tree. He’s connected to it, so if this is happening on this side…something is wrong.

Bald spots form in the canopy and branches groan under pressure. They get pulled towards the earth as if gravity is increasing and bounce back. The shaking stops and the tree stops shivering and the leaves stop raining down.

But seeing the panic on the guardians' faces, something is still wrong. Terribly wrong.

I’m forced to head into my home by the sun that has passed well over the horizon. In my chest, my heart throbs with pain. The only person I talked to in this world is dying?

Back in my home, I keep pacing around the root chamber the image of Sairal’s tree toppling in my mind. This can’t be happening. He’s strong. He’s a damned (E) grade and he has all his spores and poisons. Just what is happening?

I force myself to lie down on my mossy bed, tossing and turning while I try to force myself to sleep. I probably can’t do anything from this side, but it is best to be as well-rested as I can if It ends up if I can do anything.

As long as the tree isn’t dead, he still lives.

Just please, please keep standing throughout the night.

***

When the first rays of sunlight make it through the canopy of the trees, I pace through the forest, praying to whatever gods might exist in this world that it’s still standing and hasn’t grown worse.

I enter the clearing around the tree and a wave of nausea washes over me which makes the world around me spin. The grassy ground swims below my feet, making me think that I somehow ended up in the inner forest.

I look at Sairal’s tree that stands in the distance, entire branches bare of leaves. When I get closer the pungent scent of rot and decay fills my nose. Flies zoom around the branches, drinking up the thick black liquid that rolls down the tree’s trunk.

The mushroom guardians don’t look panicked anymore. They now seem to be enraged, hands clenched into fists as they scan the surroundings for any threat to take their anger out on.

One of them notices me and raises its fist in alarm. I wave towards it and some reasoning has returned to it. I wait a while longer for them all to see me before I make my way over the carpet of moss towards the tree.

The smell of rot is worse here, enough to make my stomach clench in disgust. I prance over the moss, the ground having grown soggy like a swamp. Even that seems to have been affected by whatever is going on.

I lay my hand on the base of his tree, begging the world that he is alright. The tree’s bark feels clammy and wet like feverish skin. Cracks run throughout it, revealing a layer of rot that hides behind it. More of the black ooze runs out of it.

The sound of flies is a painful droning in my ears. I look to the right where entire branches lay on the moss, having rotten off the tree.

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I can’t do anything. I don’t know enough about dryads to deal with this. Another dryad must know something about this. Maybe they can help.

I rack my brain for any place I can find a dryad. The army should’ve been pushed out of the forest by now. And I don’t think that they are just lazing around where the army was stationed to pick off any humans.

My eyes flick back to Sairal’s tree, especially how dark the leaves are compared to the other trees. Dryad trees often look different compared to the normal ones that make up the forest. Those two trees I saw up on that hill before I met the army should be dryad trees too.

Uncaring of the risks and the possible humans that lie in wait, I head north. I speed through the forest at a clip pace, not bothering to take care of any Segriad snails I find.

In record time I make it to the hill where I found that ginseng. With my lungs heaving and my Stamina pool half empty, I scale it already searching the forest for those strangely coloured trees.

The first thing I see are the trails of smoke that lazily reach up into the sky outside of the forest. The army has retreated for now.

I keep searching for the two strangely coloured trees in the ocean of green around me. Confused, I only find the purple tree, the black one having vanished.

An ominous feeling settles in my stomach. I push it further down and head towards the tree. Instead of cutting through the dense patch of trees, I make my way around it, having learned better.

Time is of the essence, but I can’t help anyone when I’m dead.

I slow down, deciding to walk instead of the ceaseless jog I’ve been keeping up. If something is wrong there with the dryads, I need to have an entire stamina pool to defeat or escape whatever is going on.

Behind one of the trees, something appears. For a second I think it’s a human, though this human floats in the air and doesn’t have a body.

Confused, I look at the yellow orb that makes beeping noises like a robot. It wades through the air, its single eye scanning plants in the surroundings.

[Crystalline scout] lvl 4/10 (H)

The monster scans a plant and turns around, searching its surroundings. It beeps menacingly, clearly aware that there is some sort of monster in its vicinity.

It scans the surroundings as a large thin line of yellow light rolls over everything.

I hide behind a tree, waiting for the monster to move on with whatever it was doing.

That, sadly, doesn’t happen as it lets out an angry beep and rounds the tree I’m hiding behind.

The large eye locks onto me, pulsing with energy and light.

Having seen too many movies of what the robot will do, I duck and evade a thin beam of light that bursts out from its eye.

It hits the tree and blasts apart the bark, leaving an indent and a black scorch mark.

I roll out of the way of it as it turns towards me again, evading another laser beam. I really, really don’t want to get hit by one.

The construct powers up again with red light this time. I duck behind another tree and wait it out as it fires at me again.

After a few silent seconds, I peek around the tree at the thing.

It blasts me in the face with one of the red beams. I duck back, groaning as it feels like my entire face has been pushed into a bath of acid.

Okay, that robot is gonna die. Having had enough of the construct, I sprint out from behind my cover. As I thought, the thing needs to power up the laser each time after it fires for a second.

Stamina flows into my claw as my legs eat up the distance between us.

In response the robot rises into the air, trying to escape my reach.

“No, you don’t!” I yell and jump.

As if I’m dunking a basketball through a hoop, I slam the robot to the ground.

The thing beeps in pain. I don’t spare it and land on top of it. With its eye turned at me, it fires another beam into my chest, setting some of the roots aflame while the others blacken like charred coal.

Before it can release the next salvo my claw, infused with all the Stamina that I managed to push into it, digs into the gaps between the plates.

I cock my head to the side as metal tears under the force of my claw.

The construct lets out a panicked, screech, as I widen the seam between the plates bit by bit. I peel them back slowly all while staying out of firing range of the eye.

The seam continues to widen as I wriggle my claw between it. I even lengthen it with Roots of Nature to get closer to the delicate insides of the machine.

Between the tips of my fingers, I feel tiny metal wires. I pull on them and they tear as I pull my hand back out of the seam, a grin on my face as my hand snips apart the organs of this metallic creature.

It whines one more time as its eye flickers mid-charge as it shuts off permanently.

I look down at my chest where a few of the roots smoulder with the tiniest embers. I pat them out and hope that this will regenerate instead of staying the same as my arm.

I open my notifications log, eager to see if any skills have levelled.

*Claw Slash (B) lvl 12/20 -> Claw Slash (B) lvl 13/20.

*Fire Resistance (B) lvl 1/20 -> Fire Resistance lvl 4/20.

I almost expected a level for my Roots of Nature too. But since it is Rare rarity, it takes a bit more for each level. Then again, I feel like I’m close to the next level already.

I resume, towards the possible dryad trees, always aware that the time is ticking.

***

An hour later I stare at the purple tree having taken cover in one of the bushes nearby. It definitely is a dryad tree, no doubt about it. But like when I met Sairal, the dryad is nowhere to be seen. They must either be out, or be hiding among the canopy, blending in with the leaves.

After trying to look the cat out of the tree, well in this case a dryad, I don’t see anything new. Shrugging, I turn to the fallen dryad tree.

The black tree with inky leaves lays on the ground, branches strewn around it as if a logger had a fit of rage and decided that that particular tree would be its mortal enemy for the day.

I get closer, sneaking through the bushes while making barely any noise.

A dryad lies next to it, lifeless and still. Before I approach, I scan my surroundings one more time. There is nothing, not even the birds that chirp in the trees.

I don’t like it. Whenever those pests don’t chirp something is wrong.

I get closer to the dryad, leaving the safety of the bushes behind. The closer I get, the more everything seems off. An arm is twisted wrong, the bones pressing close against skin, threatening to puncture through. Weird black blood leaks out of the dozens of small wounds that are everywhere on his body.

But that all wasn’t what got him in the end. No, something large clawed him apart. Just above his hip, he’s almost bisected in two, only a few inches of flesh making the two parts whole.

His eyes stare up to the sky, still looking at whatever did this in fear. His pupils are dilated, face scrounge up in pain even in his final moments.

I kneel next to him, careful to not step in the pool of blood, and gently close his eyes. “Rest in peace,” I say, my mood taking a turn for the worse.

Is something attacking dryads? No. It can’t be that. Whatever is happening to Sairal is completely different.

I turn back to the fallen dryad’s tree. There are no flies buzzing about, no bare branches and certainly no rot. Branches have been snapped off the tree with vicious brutality. And after having seen his wound, this was a monster.

I didn’t know him but this still feels bad. Did that wolf-blooded alligator do this to him?

I head towards the tree with purple leaves but a figure that calmly stands watching me halts me in my tracks. A woman with long purple hair, black berries tied into her hair, stares at me.

Her entire theme is purple, as she wears a purple robe that fades into black at her feet.

“What were you doing with him?” she demands. The dryad holds a whip with thorns in her hands, already aiming it my way.

“I, uh, closed his eyes. It’s a custom where I’m from. It is a sort of goodbye, I think,” I reply while looking at her.

She’s better off than him by miles, but she too is wounded. Her entire body trembles and her head is lulling back and forth as if she is in shock or has a concussion.

The dryad takes her time to digest the words and nods, “Very well, second-lifer.”

My heart skips a painful beat and leaps in my chest, but I realise my mistake and shrug. The cat is out of the bag now, no trying to put it back in. Besides, lying will make this all worse.

She looks down at her leg, only now noticing that bone is visible. She stitched it before but all the stitches seem to have snapped apart when she walked to where she was standing now.

“Oh,” she says without pain. She walks back to her tree, not limping. Then reaches into a tree hollow and pulls out a metal box with a thread and a needle.

With no emotions she plunges the needle through her skin and works on her leg, patching it up. She hums to herself, clearly out of it.

“What happened?” I ask, eyeing her out of the corner of my eye. Being in this world has made me less squeamish. This, however, is a bit much. I really, really don’t like needles.

“A beast of three heads. The monster sown from parts together, held together by thread and magic,” she wails. She shakes for a long moment, her body convulsing and her eyes darting around.

She shakes her head, “The poison is meddling with my mind. I need…” she reaches into the tree hollow again, coming back with a marble-like pill. Before I can Identify it she pops it into her mouth and nods to herself.

“That is better. It was a chimera. Elizr and I tried to take it down. We almost killed it but then…then we made a mistake. The monster got to his tree. It happened all too fast,” the dryad's voice begins to break. She coughs up and spits out a weird orange liquid and winces at it as it lands on the ground.

I don’t get closer to her. Too many strange things are going on here.

She resumes, “Elizir died and the monster played with his corpse. I took advantage and almost killed it. But almost is not dead. It is not dead,” she shakes her head and steadies herself. “Damned poison. The monster managed to get away at the last moment.”

She turns towards me, for the first time looking me over, almost as if she’s stumbling out of a dream, “Your arm. You are wounded. Do you want it healed? Yes, yes, yes I have something for it.”

The purple dryad reaches into her tree hollow for a third time, which by now I’m almost certain is reinforced by some sort of spatial skill. Her arm retreats with a glass bottle with a gold stopper and golden rim, blue liquid swirling around in it.

“I’ll give it to you if you finish off the monster. Listen, listen,” she whispers, “It’s still wounded. It poisoned me, but I poisoned it in turn. I can still feel my poison and what Elizir did. It’s weakened but you can kill it.” Her head lulls back and forth.

Is it shock, the wound, or whatever she is poisoned with?

As impressive as that potion sounds, I need more information before I take this. A potion that regenerates my arm isn’t worth my life. “It was a chimera? What is exactly its level and grade?”

She bites on her lip and pulls out one of the berries tied into her hair and chews on it. She curses the poison under her breath again. “It was three levels into (G) grade.”

I wince at that. My evolution tripled the stats and resources I gain with each level. I don’t think that is the case for the chimera, but still, it might as well be six (H) grade levels above me. But if it's wounded…

And perhaps if I can get something more out of this deal, it’ll be worth it. Besides, I came here for something else.

“Do you know what it means when a dryad tree’s leaves fall off, and the branches begin to rot?” I ask.

She looks up at me from stitching her leg, “Your friend must be severely poisoned. How many branches rotted off?”

I try to find the answer in my mind, “Two, maybe three?”

“If that treekin is below (D) grade he is in mortal danger,” she begins to sing. “Bad, bad, very bad. Poison as blood is no good. But I have the key. I have the potion that might save his life,” she reaches into the tree hollow and pulls out another bottle. “Just pour it onto their dryad heart and it will help him wherever he is,” she continues to sing. Whatever is affecting her, it’s getting worse.

“Dryad heart? You mean his tree?” I ask

“Yes. Yes. Yes!” she continues to sing while showing me the bottle.

General antipoison (F)

Cures beings from general poisons made by (F) grade beings. When faced with higher-grade poisons, it is less effective.

“What happens if it isn’t a general poison? And maybe you should take another one of those pills you took?”

She goes still and nods at me. She pulls out another pill and pops it into her mouth. “When it isn’t a general poison?” she repeats the question, “The potion still works but is less effective.”

Her head begins to lull less as the two pills she took begin to have an effect.

Sairal is poisoned and probably wounded while in the inner forest. I don’t know enough of whatever there is in those parts of the forest to know the danger he is in. I just have to assume that he is on the verge of death since that is the safe option.

I nod to myself, having come to a conclusion. “I will slay the chimera for the price of the potion that can regrow my arm and the antipoison. But, I want to be paid with the healing potion upfront. I kind of need two arms to defeat that monster.”

She turns towards me, “Good. When you return with proof, I will give the antipoison to you.”

She hands me the regeneration potion and I drink it after a quick use of Identify. I even got a level in the skill for that.

As the healing liquid flows down my throat, I feel the energies of it course through my veins. My body tingles as the energies course around, and make their way to my arm.

The cauterised roots fall off like dead skin. Below it new roots grow back, stretching out and slowly forming back into my arm. I ignore the terrible itch coming from it and just look at the roots as they wrap around each other and form into an arm.

In less than a minute I have my arm back, only this one doesn’t have the modifications I made to it.

I nod and a smile grows on my face, “Now tell me, where is that Chimera?”